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A review by ojtheviking
Blackwood Estates by William Holloway
2.0
1.5 rounded up.
This is one of those cases where my review might come across as mostly negative, even though I am merely trying to be objective. If I were to sum up my impression of this book in one single sentence, I'd say that I liked parts of this, but I wanted to like it more, if that even makes sense.
The writing is somewhat shallow, with most characters feeling like exactly that, mere characters, not very fleshed out, slightly stereotypical and one-dimensional. In fact, one of the characters he gave the most personality, was the dog (but hey, I'm a dog lover, so that's fine)
The core idea is interesting. It's just that Holloway only stuck to said core. We barely have time to get acquainted with the main character before Holloway dives right into the plot and stays there, without much embellishment or nuances, making this feel more like the overall summary of an idea; a little more polished than a sketch, but a bit sloppier than a complete painting.
With that said, I have read some other horror books with a similar feel, so maybe it's the intended style; just straight to the point to get a tale of horror done, presented as a quick little read. I suppose I still prefer a little meat on the bone to fully get acquainted with the characters and get properly immersed into the in-book universe. To put it another way, there is a difference between the terms "story" and "plot", and I felt like this was all plot, without that much of a larger story to catch underneath it all. In that respect, it could be that although I'm a horror fan, I'm still kind of not part of the intended demographic, in case there are people who prefer these more plot-driven books.
After I was 20-30 pages in, I had to stop to start searching online to see if this was a self-published book. It seems like it's something similar, as JournalStone Publishing is a company that welcomes submissions by aspiring writers, specifically Lovecraftian stories, which this novella definitely is.
One thing that made me unsure, is that this book doesn't seem to be sufficiently proofread. First of all, there's the occasional spelling error, but more noticeable is the fact that within the story, two specific years are mentioned, and at one point, the author himself gets them mixed up, in a way that couldn't be the in-universe character's mistake, due to the context. Another example is that two different paragraphs start with the same sentence, again in a way that doesn't seem intentional. Feels almost like he felt that this particular sentence fit better in one paragraph than the other, copied and pasted it, but forgot to delete it from its original position.
The writing does to a degree find its footing along the way, just not far enough. The Lovecraftian elements are actually promising, and as I said, the core idea is interesting. I just wish he'd expanded on it, and taken a bit more time with the general scenario; the characters, the set-up, the world-building, all of it needed just that tiny bit more in order to feel complete. The most crucial reason for this is that when you're not familiar enough with the characters and their backstory to fully care about them, there are no real stakes when things start going South, which they do immediately in this novella. People are dying before you even know who they are, which diminishes the impact severely.
But it's possible that if he submitted this story in accordance with JournalStone's criteria, there might have been some limitations beyond his control. I almost feel like if this story had been part of some larger short story collection, with the product specifically sold as a collection of aspiring and promising authors, I might have been less critical of it, and thought "This guy has got something, he just needs to flesh things out a bit more for a longer story in the future."
This is one of those cases where my review might come across as mostly negative, even though I am merely trying to be objective. If I were to sum up my impression of this book in one single sentence, I'd say that I liked parts of this, but I wanted to like it more, if that even makes sense.
The writing is somewhat shallow, with most characters feeling like exactly that, mere characters, not very fleshed out, slightly stereotypical and one-dimensional. In fact, one of the characters he gave the most personality, was the dog (but hey, I'm a dog lover, so that's fine)
The core idea is interesting. It's just that Holloway only stuck to said core. We barely have time to get acquainted with the main character before Holloway dives right into the plot and stays there, without much embellishment or nuances, making this feel more like the overall summary of an idea; a little more polished than a sketch, but a bit sloppier than a complete painting.
With that said, I have read some other horror books with a similar feel, so maybe it's the intended style; just straight to the point to get a tale of horror done, presented as a quick little read. I suppose I still prefer a little meat on the bone to fully get acquainted with the characters and get properly immersed into the in-book universe. To put it another way, there is a difference between the terms "story" and "plot", and I felt like this was all plot, without that much of a larger story to catch underneath it all. In that respect, it could be that although I'm a horror fan, I'm still kind of not part of the intended demographic, in case there are people who prefer these more plot-driven books.
After I was 20-30 pages in, I had to stop to start searching online to see if this was a self-published book. It seems like it's something similar, as JournalStone Publishing is a company that welcomes submissions by aspiring writers, specifically Lovecraftian stories, which this novella definitely is.
One thing that made me unsure, is that this book doesn't seem to be sufficiently proofread. First of all, there's the occasional spelling error, but more noticeable is the fact that within the story, two specific years are mentioned, and at one point, the author himself gets them mixed up, in a way that couldn't be the in-universe character's mistake, due to the context. Another example is that two different paragraphs start with the same sentence, again in a way that doesn't seem intentional. Feels almost like he felt that this particular sentence fit better in one paragraph than the other, copied and pasted it, but forgot to delete it from its original position.
The writing does to a degree find its footing along the way, just not far enough. The Lovecraftian elements are actually promising, and as I said, the core idea is interesting. I just wish he'd expanded on it, and taken a bit more time with the general scenario; the characters, the set-up, the world-building, all of it needed just that tiny bit more in order to feel complete. The most crucial reason for this is that when you're not familiar enough with the characters and their backstory to fully care about them, there are no real stakes when things start going South, which they do immediately in this novella. People are dying before you even know who they are, which diminishes the impact severely.
But it's possible that if he submitted this story in accordance with JournalStone's criteria, there might have been some limitations beyond his control. I almost feel like if this story had been part of some larger short story collection, with the product specifically sold as a collection of aspiring and promising authors, I might have been less critical of it, and thought "This guy has got something, he just needs to flesh things out a bit more for a longer story in the future."